Rebecca Groothuis on biblical equality

Here.  Rebecca is the wife of Douglas Groothuis.

The One True Religion Fallacy

Here.  

HT: Bob Prokop

Was Dan Quayle Right? (about single mothers)

Apparently, he is still being defended, here. 

Intelligent Design asks a legitimate question, whatever else you might think

Im-Skeptical wrote: Science shows that evolution is a purely natural process, even though you might think there is still some divine hand behind it, sort of telling nature how to behave. But that's not what "ID science" claims. They specifically reject natural evolution. They say that complex life forms could not have evolved naturally. You can call this an anti-ID backlash if you want. What I'm against is their rejection of science in matters that are well settled.

Now here is what I think problematic about this type of argument. We can begin with a distinction between design exclusion and design denial. Design exclusion just says that design is not brought into a scientific explanation for, say, why the bacterial flagellum works the way it does. If that's the case, then science can't say that the B-F was designed (since that would be not to do science), but it also can't say that it wasn't. If we are adhering to a strict methodological naturalism, then all we can say is that since we're science over here, we can't make design part of the explanation for the B-F. The question of design is left outside the competence of science. Many people in science adhere to this kind of a position. Some are theists and some are atheists. Operating this way, it is easy to get to the conclusion that naturalistic evolution is the best science, because it's the only game in town by definition. The result is some version of NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria). Consistently applied this leads to a kind of "language game" perspective where scientists are playing the scientific language game, but that wouldn't prevent someone from playing the religious language game and affirming creation. The claim that one perspective or the other represents reality would be regarded on this view to be a mistake. 

But methodological naturalism gets challenged on both sides. People who think science should affirm a designer are going to see this as an unjustified limitation on science, and also those, like Dawkins, who argue that the evidence of evolution reveals a world without design have to argue that science could have reached the opposite result if the evidence had been different. But then we have to go back through the history of biology to figure out whether the dog is wagging its tail or the tail is wagging the dog. Did naturalistic evolution become the only game in town because of methodological constraints, or would scientists have found design if only it had been there. Because methodological arguments have so often been used in defense of evolution, I consider it unfair to call ID advocates IDiots, since they are asking a perfectly legitimate question. 

Mutual Submission in Ephesians

This is a debate concerning whether the Bible really teaches that husbands are supposed to have a one-way authority over their wives. One of the passages that is often used to support this is Ephesians 5:22, but it Ephesians 5:21 Paul says “Submit (or, submitting) to one another out of reverence for Christ.” 

Wayne Grudem is a critic of the idea of mutual submission, but Margaret Mowzscko defends it. I'm definitely on Margaret's side here. It seems to me that one-way submission opens the door for abuse.

Craig on the AFR

Here. 

Angus Menuge on the argument from reason

Here.  Wintery Knight has put together some resources.

Alexander Pruss's version of the Cosmological Argument

Here. 

Lydia McGrew on Feser and ID

Here. 

William Lane Craig defends the argument from contingency

William Lane Craig defends the argument from contingency. Here. 

Women in the Colorado philosophy department reply

Here.  Alison Jaggar, in particular, is a well-known feminist philosopher.

Steve Thomas interviews me

A redated post.

Steve Thomas did an interview of me that spells out some basics of the Argument from Reason. It was done before C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea was published.

A new brief form of the argument from reason

By Darek Barefoot.

Political correctness and the search for academic freedom

Discussed in a post by Lydia McGrew here. 

HT: Steve Hays

A couple of quotes from C. S. Lewis's Miracles, chapter 8

If I put six pennies into a drawer on Monday and six more on Tuesday, the laws decree that – other things being equal – I shall find twelve pennies there on Wednesday. But if the drawer is has been robbed I may in fact find only two. Something will have been broken (the lock of the drawer or the laws of England) but the laws of arithmetic will not have been broken.

Lewis, C. S. (1947) ‘Miracles’ ‘Chapter 8: Miracles and the Laws of Nature’ p 60

This perhaps helps to make a little clearer what the laws of Nature really are. We are in the habit of talking as if they caused events to happen; but they have never caused any event at all. The laws of motion do not set billiard balls moving: they analyse the motion after something else (say, a man with a cue, or a lurch of the liner, or, perhaps, supernatural power) has provided it. They produce no events: they state the pattern to which every event – if only it can be induced to happen – must conform, just as the rules of arithmetic state the pattern to which all transactions with money must conform – if only you can get hold of any money. Thus in one sense the laws of Nature cover the whole field of space and time; in another, what they leave out is precisely the whole real universe – the incessant torrent of actual events which makes up true history. That must come from somewhere else. To think the laws can produce it is like thinking that you can create real money by simply doing sums. For every law, in the last resort, says ‘If you have A, then you will get B’. But first catch your A: the laws won’t do it for you.

Lewis, C. S. (1947) ‘Miracles’ ‘Chapter 8: Miracles and the Laws of Nature’ p 61s 

Francis Beckwith on religious arguments in the public square

Here. Arguments are good or bad, and whether they are religious or not is irrelevant.

Bob Prokop on Skepticism about Extra-Terrestrial Intellgence

If Bob is right, the devotees of SETI can eat their heart out.

Here. 

Bob, if I recall correctly, you have the support of the late great Joe Sheffer on this one. (Appeal to authority, appeal to authority).

This post has nothing to do with religion that I know of.

NT allusions in the Ante-Nicene Fathers

Here. 

Pope John Paul II speaks to astrophysicists

This is a John Paul II speech to a group of astrophysics.

Anti-science? It doesn't sound that way.

Bart Ehrman on textual integrity

There was a debate on this between Ehrman and Daniel Wallace. Here is what Ehrman said: 

To be sure, of all the hundreds of thousands of textual changes found among our manuscripts, most of them are completely insignificant, immaterial, and of no real importance for anything other than showing that scribes could not spell or keep focused any better than the rest of us.